The Hole Story

Viewers of this week's U.S. Women's Open will be impressed by the 18th hole, which rises like an exclamation point toward the Newport Country Club's landmark yellow clubhouse. A stout, 448-yard par-4 with a sandy maw bisecting the fairway and a green perched on the edge of the hill, the hole will punctuate the finale with zest.

But the ascent up the finishing fairway won't be a climb up Newport's number 18. The USGA has reversed the routing, so the hike's actually up number 9. I should know its number. The hole certainly has mine.

I admit to loving this hole shamelessly and have since the day we met, in the early 1990s, shortly after I fell for a woman whose mother went into labor with her while scaling its slope. Across the next decade the relationship between me and number 9 only grew deeper.

Playing Newport regularly with my better half's uncle--a tall, courtly man who had been navigating its privileged sward for 60-plus years (14 as club president)--I was awed by his command of every hump and bump. Members' bounces? Uncle Guy's were mystical. When he brandished his ancient Bulls Eye putter, the rub of the green rarely rubbed him the wrong way. The course captivated him, every hole a narrative layered in lore he adored passing on. And number 9 was where the plot thickened.

Like the time he pointed to a distant cottage and said, "Aim for Jackie's window." For it was the former First Lady's childhood bedroom at Hammersmith Farm that marked the ideal driving line. There was also his revelation that the forest bedeviling me to the right of the fairway was planted the summer he turned six; its purpose was to deter Newport's pre-jet-set crowd from turning the fairways into runways.

Uncle Guy measured his golfing life against this hole. Approaching 80, he resigned himself to negotiating its cross bunker in two. Yet he wasn't too old (or courtly) to squeal when I yipped an unconceded gimme for par. Despite my admiration, my ongoing struggle with the hole became a story. After a match, no one asked who had won, only how I had butchered number 9 this time.

In August 2004 Uncle Guy, sapped by chemotherapy, rallied for a daily nine when his niece and I visited. During our last match--the final round of his life--he curled in a snake on number 9, then handed me his Bulls Eye. I drained a 12-footer. I'm not sure which of us was more stunned. "A par," he said at last, nodding. "I've seen everything. I can go."

He did, three months later. On my first round at Newport last summer, I carried his Bulls Eye, using it only once, on the 9th, to convert a six-footer for par. The club has hung in my office ever since, but I'm bringing the Bulls Eye to the Open, ladies, and it's available for use on No. 9. We'll be easy to find. Just aim for Jackie's window.

GOLF PLUS will next appear in the July 18 issue of SPORTS ILLUSTRATED.